The concept ‘targeted killing’ has been increasingly adopted in scholarship, policy and media discourses, particularly in the context of US armed drone attacks. While ‘targeted killing’ is often understood as something new, there are strong historical continuities with more traditional concepts such as ‘assassination’ and ‘extra-judicial execution’, as well as with the colonial concept ‘police bombing’. This paper builds on an analysis of over 900 Security Council debates, Human Rights Council reports, legal papers and policy documents. Tracing the conceptual continuities, I argue that the peculiar novelty of ‘targeted killing’ does not mainly stem from the novelty of the practices and claims it describes but from the contradictory modes in which the term has been used, which has problematic repercussions for recent counterterrorism discourses. Posed as a new category which reacts to a new situation, the adoption of the concept ‘targeted killing’ has, I argue, played an important role in the promotion of claims which were long considered unlawful and illegitimate. Demonstrating the importance of language in setting political struggles up in a particular way, the paper contributes to a growing body of critical work on counterterrorism use of force.

中文翻译：

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新颖的诱惑：“针对性杀人”及其较老的术语兄弟姐妹

在学术，政策和媒体方面，尤其是在美国武装无人机袭击的情况下，“针对性杀人”的概念已越来越多地被采用。虽然“有针对性的杀戮”通常被理解为新事物，但它与更传统的概念（例如“暗杀”和“司法外处决”）以及殖民地概念“警察轰炸”有着很强的历史连续性。本文以对900多项安全理事会辩论，人权理事会报告，法律文件和政策文件的分析为基础。追溯概念上的连续性，我认为“针对性杀人”的特殊新颖性并非主要源于其所描述的做法和主张的新颖性，而是源于使用该术语的矛盾方式，这对最近的反恐产生了令人质疑的影响。话语。我认为，“有针对性的杀人”这个概念是对新情况做出反应的新类别，它在促进长期以来被认为是非法和非法的索偿中发挥了重要作用。该文件证明了语言在以特殊方式进行政治斗争中的重要性，并为反恐使用武力的批判工作做出了贡献。